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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

If you talk to any recent med school graduate they will
often have all kinds of advice regarding how to approach the dreaded residency
interview circuit. When it comes time to
sell yourself to future employers in order to shore up a job upon graduation, the
advice varies and is often contradictory, just as personalities vary and often
contradict. Interviews can be fun and
terrible at the same time. You meet
dozens of applicants from around the country, listen to program directors sell
their individual programs, and smile.
Always smile. And for those who
knew me, they seemed to always add that I should try staying awake while
smiling. I guess because smiling with
your eyes closed is sort of creepy. But
these ended up being my first two pillars of good interviewing which I feel necessary
to pass on to future generations. It
seems simple enough, but there exists a fundamental principle of attending
multiple interviews. The first interview
is exciting. Then the next four—or twenty-four—interviews
after that are all exponentially more exhausting. You begin digging deep within the sacred
reserves of your soul to keep both mouth corners and eyelids peeled in upward
fashion. Interviewing for residency is
like the smiling Olympics. You feel
confident going in, but then quickly realize you are up against a lot of
world-class gunners…uh, I mean
grinners. But smiling and staying awake
aren’t enough. It was actually on my
fourteenth interview, when I was fast losing hope that I would even be counted
among the finishers, that I discovered a third pillar of success. Do not forget your socks.

Yes, everyone should learn early on to make a list of things
to pack on every interview. This keeps
you from forgetting things like cellphone chargers and toiletries. But in my case, it didn’t save me from
showing up in Portland without socks. So
my name is Jay, I am now a physician and surgeon in training, and earlier this
year, I showed up to an interview having forgotten to pack my socks. This is my story.

Just to be clear, I did not actually show up in a new city
without any socks. I had white tube socks, because I was
forward-thinking enough to pack athletic gear since I was training for a
triathlon at the time. I ran five miles
on a treadmill the night before my interview, and the socks I wore for that run
were both fantastic and fully present
in my suitcase. The footwear problem did
not surface until the morning of my interview when I woke up, quickly showered,
and donned my gray suit and tie. After
checking my smile in the mirror, I discovered that my dress socks were incredibly
absent from my suit case. It was an hour
before I was scheduled to be at my interview site, but being the cool character
that I was, I did not panic. I knew I
had the tube socks, so I tried those on first.
A quick glance in the mirror immediately revealed that wearing white
tube socks with a gray suit makes your ankles look like they are glowing in the
dark whenever you sit down. I recall
this realization coincided with the onset of my panic. I tore off my socks and evaluated myself
without any socks at all. Though naked
ankles were marginally better than glow-in-the-dark ankles, I determined that
showing off your ankles is not a pillar of good interviewing. I began to panic some more. So I hurried downstairs to my hotel front
desk.

The next few discoveries I made were perhaps just as novel. When you ask the front desk worker if they
carry extra socks, this is equivalent to asking for a ride to your interview in
a kangaroo. Their eyebrows are at first
too askew to give you a straight answer.
Only after explaining that I had a job interview in an hour and had
forgotten my dress socks did I get a straight answer. The answer was no. It was a very polite no, and the lady was
even kind enough to call a few drug stores just to confirm that nobody was awake
at five in the morning to sell me socks.
This is when I began running scenarios in my head. If I went to my interview sockless, should I
take a proactive approach and mention to my interviewers that I was not bearing
my ankles on purpose? Or do I just play
it cool and hope that nobody notices the flesh between the end of my pant leg
and the lip of my shoe? Is being a guy
who forgets socks better than being a guy who goes au naturel in his nice shoes? These were terribly complex questions that my
brain was not prepared to answer at five in the morning. Maybe I could try pulling my suit pants down so
low as to minimize my ankle exposure? But
then is sagging your suit pants better than flashing your naked ankles? I felt like I was trapped in this awful game
of non-hypothetical would-you-rather.

I’ve often heard artists talk about inspiration striking
when they least expect it. And while I
have never considered myself any sort of an artist, my muse must have been close
by that morning. Amidst the tightening
grip of my panic, I suddenly had a desperate thought. I turned back to the lady at the front desk
and this time asked for (or perhaps demanded) a pair of scissors. She gave me a curious look, but handed me a
pair without question. I grabbed my
suitcase and darted to a corner of the lobby.
I pulled out a gray long sleeve t-shirt—the exact one I had worn during
my previous night’s run. I glance
quickly at the shirt sleeves and knew they were my only hope. With a few imprecise snips, I was able to
detach the sleeves from my t-shirt, quickly fashioning a pair of poor man’s leg
warmers. I slipped my heel into these
and pulled the end halfway up my calf.
They were ill-fit and baggy, but when I stepped into my shoes, they gave
the impression of socks. I tied a knot
in the upper end of these cloth tubes to better fit my calves and returned the
scissors with a triumphant thank you.
The lady was nice enough to not ask questions, although I was quite sure
she had unknowingly witnessed what was perhaps the most inspired moment of my
medical school career.

I made it through the entire interview day without incident,
though I did have to adjust my makeshift ankle coverings a few times because
they kept coming lose and drooping.
Honestly, after interviewing at over a dozen locations, all the flights,
the faces, and the formalities tend to become somewhat of a giant blur. But of all the cool experiences I do
remember, slicing the sleeves off a t-shirt to make leg warmers is definitely
one of my favorites. Thus my three
pillars of having a successful interview season are this: smile, stay awake,
and socks. Super easy to remember and
guaranteed to improve your performance.
You know how they say when life gives you lemons, you should try making
lemonade? I think the truth is that in
life, we are often the ones gifting ourselves with lemons. The whole adage is just an elegant way of
saying that we all have a stupid version of ourselves whose sole purpose is to
collect lemons and dump them on us at the most inopportune times. Our only hope is that when our brains are
working at some measurable capacity, we can come up with a passable recipe for
lemonade. But of course, it makes much
more sense bring socks to an interview than to make t-shirt-sleeve-dress-sock
lemonade.